MTV’s Jimmy the Cab Driver Returns in the New Mark Lanegan Video

There was a time when MTV was only bad most of the time. It was called the early ‘90s, and you could still find good stuff like (pre-Matt Pinfeld) 120 Minutes and Liquid Television and The State amid the endless Aerosmith and Stone Temple Pilots videos.

One of the best things on the network back then couldn’t be found on the schedule. MTV tended to have great ads throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, often made by experimental filmmakers, underground animators, and comedians who would otherwise never crack the channel’s lineup. The most popular series of ads in the early ‘90s starred a character known as Jimmy the Cab Driver, a filthy Irish-American chatterbox without a shred of self-awareness who would subject his fares to tortured (and hilarious) descriptions of videos he had seen on MTV. Played by Donal Logue, the future star of Terriers and Gotham, Jimmy the Cab Driver was like an unofficial mascot for MTV during the height of the “alternative” era. He was phased out as the decade went on, disappearing before teen pop and hip-hop fully took over MTV near the end of the ‘90s, but anybody who spent too many hours watching music videos after school in 1994 will probably never forget the guy.